“How long ago?” I asked Mr. Douglas, my newest patient, when he had entered the water in the Boonies.

“It was actually early in the fighting, tapered off quite a bit after that. We had to find a new zone,” he answered after a moment of careful thought.

“The Bloodworm has probably worked its way well up into your chest. This is not a problem, I’m simply letting you know.” His instant panic faded as quickly as it had started to rise at a touch of my Aura of Valor.

I put my hand down on the center of his chest. “Your heart is fine,” I told him, relieving him more. “Anything else can be fixed up before it becomes life-threatening.” I ran my other hand up his leg, the frostyhot sensation ensuring that he didn’t have any embarrassing reaction to it, up along the major veins, and paused there, shifting around slightly. “If the other Healers would care to see if they can sense it?” I asked them, spinning out of the way, keeping my hand on his chest above his heart.

The others all held back as the Acropolis Priestess immediately stepped forwards and put her hands on him. She was the one who had healed up his cracked ribs earlier, yet somehow missed this, so he was giving her a skeptical look that probably incensed her.

Yet the soft white light of her Healing Magic was finding nothing, and her frown only grew deeper.

“Next,” I flicked her off, and she withdrew with a forcibly calm expression. “Water Magic?” I asked the next Healer to step forward, who nodded in surprise. “Use that. There’s something in him that has blood that is not his. It’s very small, so you’ll have to be sharp, but if you’re capable of sensing a bacterial infection, you should have no problems finding it.”

She seemed somewhat surprised, but after a glance at the Acropolis Healer, decided it was probably the wiser thing to do. She put her hands on Mr. Douglas, but not directly over the place where I’d stopped. Instead, she circled around it, making slow circles as she rippled probably ticklish Water Magic through him, until abruptly pausing directly above where I had. “It is there!” she stated firmly, and I lifted a finger to forestall more words.

She stepped back, and the man stepped forwards eagerly. “Air Magic?” I asked of him, and he nodded slowly. “You are looking for something with its own breathing, stealing it from the blood around it. The technique would probably not work on anything smaller, but if you have good control, you should be able to feel the difference between the cells of the body getting oxygen to them from the blood, and this thing taking it from them and exuding carbon dioxide.”

He took a deep breath, nodded, and put his hands on Mr. Douglas’ chest. Like the woman before him, he started from the outside in, working towards the goal.

Like her, he also paused at a certain point, rather startled despite himself as he stared at nothing. “That... is nothing like I’ve ever felt before,” he admitted to me. “If I didn’t know Healing Magic, I’d’ve never noticed it.”

“Almost all Elements have Healing aspects to them,” I told him smoothly. “What is your opinion of his lungs?”

He lifted an eyebrow as he shifted his hands, while Mr. Douglas managed to look embarrassed. “Interesting. A large amount of hostile coatings on the alveoli, interfering with air exchange.” He looked down at the man. “You like to smoke. It’s affecting your endurance in a fight. You’ve basically got a bunch of tar coating the inside of your lungs, interfering with your ability to breathe.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m trying to quit...” the Hunter sighed, embarrassed.

---

The Light Element had a spiritual component to it, and could locate the Bloodworm on the ‘other spirit’ paradigm.

The Fire Element could locate it because the creature was cold-blooded, not generating the heat like the rest of its host’s body was, siphoning heat that the mitochondria in other cells were generating.

There was even a Lightning Element Healer, definitely a rarity, who could easily follow the Kirlian Field of his body and identify the intruder.

The Priestess being unable to track it was almost a slap in her face, and she was most unhappy about it. There was no Ice Element user around, but they inferred one would be able to track it by the same method as a Fire user, if they were sensitive enough.

The Bloodworm itself was attached to the bottom of Mr. Douglas’ liver already, making itself at home. I asked if he liked to drink, and he sighed again before answering in the affirmative.

Kendra Schwartz, the Lightning Healer, got the first crack at chasing it out. Healing Magic wasn’t going to thwart it, but precise voltage rapidly had it disengaging and fleeing through his blood vessels. She chased it down his right arm, which Sama adroitly cut open and lifted it out of, making the Hunter gasp in relief as the twitching chase ended.

The other Healers were happy to deal with the rest of the victims, testing out their ability to find the Bloodworm first, then one by one figuring out how to chase it out of its host. Water Magic could literally drain it dry by isolating it from all blood, sending it fleeing. Air Magic could start drowning it by blocking its theft of oxygen-bearing red blood cells, and send it literally chasing ‘good blood’ out to a chosen exit point. Fire raised the temperature precisely around it, until it had to disengage or start to boil to death inside its host, fleeing the heat precisely like I used until it could be brought somewhere close to the surface and removed.

Ice would do the same as fire from the opposite direction. My Firefrost method literally ladled the two methods together.

It was notable that the ones infecting people from earlier in the fight were twice the mass of those removed later. Unsurprisingly, the things ate people from the inside at a supernatural rate. No doubt we had missed a bunch of them and people were going to die from them, but all we could do was get the word out.

---------

“The Acropolis would like to extend you an invitation, Lady Fae,” Sister Tesha, the Acropolis Healer, said respectfully as the assembled crowd rapidly dispersed, ready to head to Boonie Hall and get some chowder.

It had been a light day in the Boonies, as only about fifty fighters had died, most of those grouped in a heavy wave area that wasn’t reinforced quickly enough to take the pressure.

It wouldn’t stop more from coming, and the toll we’d taken in return had been much, much higher, not that the cold grey waters of the Atlantic seemed to care.

Thousands of soldiers, Hunters, and trainees a year, sent into a bloody blender. Population control...

If we could get guns working and widespread, suddenly that pool of people was going to be much more numerous, and much more dangerous. We’d just have to see, however.

The monuments of names around Boonie Hall were ever-growing, ever-expanding. The Earth Mages made sure to keep them up-to-date, and every day started with the recitation of those who had passed the day before, so everyone would know that this was not a game, and this was not fun. This was bloody war and they had to be ready to kill.

It still didn’t stick home for many of them, and they often didn’t realize they were just participants in some Sea Emperor’s version of gladiatorial games, watching all this from over the horizon and enjoying itself at the spectacle...

I considered her words on the face of it, and then shook my head. Despite herself, she was startled by the refusal. “I am not intending to leave America for a considerable period of time, plus I doubt there’s anything I can contribute to the Acropolis in terms of the healing knowledge they’ve shared so generously over the millennia with the rest of humanity, given my age and experience. I will decline the invitation, Sister, but thank you for delivering it.”

The Knight at her shoulder literally bridled at the reply. “Do you have any idea of the honor it is to- mrph!”

Briggs hoisted the lad up off his feet effortlessly, gauntleted hand around the young man’s mouth, bringing him to eye level as kicking feet tinged off his Armor. The Sun of a Source swept over the Knight, and no, no magic was coming to save him, his eyes bulging with frantic, sudden powerlessness.

“Once,” Briggs said, his voice as cold and old as the hills, the ground rumbling. “You get one warning about rudeness. Then I start breaking things to help you remember, little knight,” he ground out. His fingers twitched, and the man convulsed. “I start with shattering your jaw into at least twenty pieces, none of which will heal with magic, so you get to suck your food through a straw for three months and endure a lot of surgeries to rebuild it.” He shook the young man like a rag doll. “Do you understand me, little knight? I’m being polite here. I’m giving you a warning, I’m telling you the consequences, and all you have to do is shut up and do your job, not put your inconsequential opinion where it does not matter.”

Briggs slammed the guy down on his heels hard enough to pop his knees, and pushed him away with a casual motion that nevertheless sent him ten feet backwards, skidding and falling to the ground.

“Let’s go, Lady Fae,” he growled, his eyes passing over the Acropolis Sister with complete apathy. Neither he nor Sama could be healed by their methods, so they had little use for Healers in general for themselves, or the elitist attitudes of the Acropolis in particular. Just more entitled Casters from their viewpoint.

---

The Sister was about to speak up, when she met Sama’s very blue eyes, and her words caught in her throat, eyes irresistibly drawn to the scars on the side of Sama’s face, scars no Healer could deal with at all.

The Golden Hag wasn’t called that for nothing. The Healer swallowed her words as the trio walked away, and her humiliated and embarrassed Knight had to be urgently stopped from starting something that was going to end up with him very dead.

“Do not anger them!” Sister Tesha scolded him, and he instantly obeyed, the Knights of the Acropolis extremely well-conditioned to obey the Healers they protected. “The Acropolis and I do not need your words to defend us, only your deeds! If the Mothers had truly wanted the girl to come to them, they would have sent someone more important than I to deliver the invitation!”

Her Knight looked wronged, but he reined himself in completely regardless. “How can her status compare at all to yours, Sister?” he huffed, glaring after her.

“Ten million dollars a day, ten thousand eager spellcasters throwing money at her to gain the spells she has made available to them? Over six hundred of your fellow Knights are waiting eagerly for their turn at the Spellhouses, and you are trying to discount her status?” She turned a skeptical eye on him as he flushed. “If she opens Spellhouses to Lightning, Water, and Shadow, will you still sneer at those who take up her spells and decry her status as lowly and unworthy of a Knight of the Acropolis then?

“Furthermore, what if she has spells of the Healing Element? What if she then denied them to members of the Acropolis, on account of the Temple obviously not needing them with our ‘millennia of generous sharing of Healing knowledge with the world’, hmm?

“Worse, what if she has them of the Blessing Element?”

His shocked expression showed he hadn’t really thought such a matter through. The Acropolis had a near-monopoly on the sacred Blessing Element, and if mages wanted to learn its spells, they had little choice but to submit to the Acropolis to learn such things. The magic of the Blessing Element was not numerous, but it was potent, and those Blessed by its magic stood head and shoulders above those not so kindly treated.

Losing that monopoly would certainly harm the very foundation of the Acropolis!

“She is so dangerous?” he had to ask, wondering if the Temple would move against her.

“She could have her choice of factions to join, including the Temple, and yet she chose to join a new organization led by two mutants who cannot even Cast the simplest spells.” Her dark eyes narrowed in thought. “I imagine the Synod is equally disturbed with her choices, but such matters are above you and I. We shall leave her for others to deal with.”

The matter dealt with, Sister Tesha started walking away. She always hated coming down to the Boonies, as the smell of dead fish and gore always clung to the stones and people here. The Hall at least demanded visitors clean themselves up before subjecting the Healers there to their problems...